


Special Ops

by selryel



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selryel/pseuds/selryel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A soldier's eye view of Zell Dincht, the man, the myth, the legend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special Ops

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Perkyandproud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perkyandproud/gifts).



I remember the pride I felt when I opened that letter. 

_In his infinite wisdom, His Majesty has selected you, as a skilled and loyal member of His Armed Forces, for overseas training.  In the King's name, you are charged to study at the Galbadian Academy, to learn the most modern weapons and methods of warfare, the better to smite his foes._

When I arrived at the Academy, I learned many things, not all of which appeared on the curriculum.  For one thing, no one had ever heard of His Majesty or even our country.  Most mapmakers didn't even bother with us.  The second, related, lesson came hot on the heels of the first – no one else had heard of our hated enemies or our off-again on-again war to bring them to heel.  By the time I returned to the fold of His Majesty's forces, I had grown to understand the true scope of the world and how little our corner of it mattered. 

At the Academy, we spent a lot of time studying the work of Gunther Schultz, founder of the so-called scholarly school of warfare.  Then, just when we'd committed _Theories of War _to memory, another instructor came in and told us how the scholarly school no longer had any relevance due to the developments in modern weaponry.  Schultz wrote in a time when armies still marched in large formations, and what possible applicability could that have three millennia later?

The modern officer, they informed us, had an entirely different job.  We'd stay behind the lines, controlling the battle from the other end of a monitor.  They promised us safe and sanitary.  For those officers who joined up with Galbadia, war probably did seem safe and sanitary.  Back at home, however, the trenches offered neither of those comforts.  We couldn't afford monitors or communications relays.  We could barely afford second-hand weapons purchased from arms dealers.

After six weeks in the trenches, we'd advanced little more than a stone's throw.  I quickly came to realize how the country had stayed so small – by throwing generation after generation into the path of enemy machine guns. 

When I received the message calling me to headquarters, I braced myself for that possibility. Still, the command bunker made for a nice change of pace, as it stood far enough behind the lines that the ground barely shook when the shells hit.  How else could the command staff keep the brandy from spilling out of their glasses?

The aide-de-camp welcomed me and ushered me into General Morin's presence.  To properly visualize the general, imagine a walrus poured into a uniform.  Then give the walrus a lobotomy and the power to determine who lives and who dies.

"Captain, come in," Morin said.  I wondered if he knew he still had soup on his mustache.  I saluted.  It helped me keep a straight face.  "I won't mince words," he said, "I have a very important assignment for you."

My heart sank.  _Very Important Assignment_ meant _suicide mission_.  I'd earned my bars when the captain before me received a very important assignment.  Somewhere in the distance, a staff member read a message and slid some pieces around on the big map.

I tried to speak but found I couldn't.  The general didn't seem to notice.  He gestured to the big map, and my head swam as I tried to turn to look at it.  I felt miles away, the middle of an out-of-body experience.  "We are going to break this stalemate," he proclaimed.

"Oh, come on," said a voice from the edge of my consciousness, "you're _killing _the poor kid."

The general bristled, unused to anyone interrupting his pronouncements.  Seeing him rattled pulled me back into my body and I turned to face the speaker.

He melted out of the shadows in the corner of the room.  I don't know how I hadn't seen him before, even though I must have passed right by him without noticing.  He'd called me a kid, but I would have put him no older than twenty, tops.  Tattoos crisscrossed his face and his hair stood up in spikes that would not have passed muster in any conventional military force.

"Zell Dincht," he said, extending a hand to me.  "How ya doin'?"

Stupefied, I tried to salute, but he waved me off.  "Don't salute me, I work for a living," he grinned.  He flicked an emblem on his chest, a yin-yang design on a blue cross.

My beleaguered brain tried to make sense of it.  "SeeD?"

"And on the first try!" he said, turning back to the general.  "Keep your eye on this one, he's sharp."

The general pulled on the front of his uniform, forcing it to strain to cover his gut.  He still seemed unnerved by the mercenary's demeanor.  "Captain, you're to take our guest into the enemy's forward base…"

I blacked out after that.  I'm told I remained standing for the rest of the briefing, but the next thing I knew, I found myself navigating through the trenches, leading a squad of men and the SeeD toward enemy lines.

"…so the spider-robot collapses, and we all feel pretty good about ourselves, right?  I mean, exam nothing, I figured I'm in line for my first promotion! "Zell said.  Kerr nodded eagerly, hanging on his every word.  "When all of a sudden there's this horrible… screech.  Like a tank trying to give birth to a truck, and I kid you not, the damn thing starts repairing itself."

Pugh's jaw dropped.  For good or for ill, neither side of our war had the money to field a self-repairing spider-robot. 

"I mean, I watched a hole the size of my fist – the exact size of my fist, if you catch my meaning – close up like it'd never been there.  The stupid thing stands up, good as new, and starts _chasing _us down the street."

I signaled for a halt.  We'd reached the end of the line.  The point our trenches closest to the enemy lines.

"That's my cue, huh?" Zell said, moving to the front of the line.  He put one foot on the ladder and turned to us.  "Look, I can't promise I'll bring you all back alive.  But I'll do my best and given the situation, that offers pretty fair odds."

He climbed up the ladder a little, then looked right at me, grinned, and offered a thumbs-up.

"Wait," said Rutledge.  "Don'tchu wanta gun or somethin'?"

The SeeD shrugged.  He wiggled his fingers at us, and I noticed his odd gloves for the first time.  "Got everything I need right here."

With that he disappeared up and over the top.  All the weeks in the trench conditioned me for the immediate rattle of machine gun fire, but we heard nothing.  Steeling our collective nerves, we followed suit.

Back in officer training, they'd promised us that tanks had rendered trench warfare obsolete.  And the end of trench warfare spelled the end of the no man's land between the trenches.  Assuming, of course, you could afford a tank to attack the enemy in their trenches.

How, then, to describe no man's land, a place that to the modern world no longer existed?  A broken, blasted, twisted place pockmarked with craters, alien and inhospitable as the surface of the moon, a place for corpses that would never see burial.  A poet once said that only one thing could live in no man's land: madness.

Dincht seemed perfectly at home there, threading his way through mines and hollowed-out buildings as easily as strolling through the park.  We followed close at his heels, not wanting to step off the path he'd charted for us.

At one point he gestured for us to stop, then vanished off through the smoke.  We waited in silence for the better part of an hour before he returned.  He threw a few bandoliers of ammunition to the boys and a demolitions pouch to Rutledge.

"Happy birthday," he mouthed before setting off again.

For two days, we lived like that.  Moving when he indicated safety, stopping when he indicated danger.  In all that time we never saw an enemy patrol.  He'd slink off into the shadows and return, bringing us a pack of smokes or some extra rations.  I can't say for sure that he didn't sleep in that time, only that I never saw him sleep.

It all came to an end as we approached the forward base.  He studied the building through my field glasses, and I could almost hear the gears in his brain turning.

"Razor wire at the top of the walls," he scowled.  "So much for a straight climb."

The men all looked at me in disbelief.  I had nothing to offer them.

"But those guard towers, now _those _look promising," he murmured.  His upper lip pulled back in a cold grin, flashing his incisors.  "Here's what we're gonna do, kids.  Rutledge, pass me a couple of charges.  When I give the go-ahead I want you to blow them.  Kerr, you take out the sniper in the other tower at the same time.  Give me covering fire on the gate team, then hunker down and wait for me to pop the gates."

"How are you gonna get inside?" Pugh asked.

Dincht laughed once.  "Please."

He took the two charges from Rutledge and skulked toward the base.  Even watching him move, I could barely keep track of him, he blended that well.  Then he appeared again at our sides.

"Ready, kids?" he asked, bouncing on his heels as if prepping for a race.

Rutledge blew the charges as Kerr dropped one of the snipers.  The tower closest to us had two of its legs blown off, and it collapsed towards the base, landing on the top of the wall.  The sniper inside fell out of the tower, landing face first in the razor wire as he fell.

By this time, the shooting had started in earnest.  We returned fire at the guards at the gate.  Over the deafening rattle of guns and the screech of alarms, I heard Pugh swear.  "Holy shit, he's not gonna—"

Dincht ran past us, moving faster than any human had a right to move.  He barreled down on the toppled tower like a freight train out of hell.  A fast bound and he'd started running up one of the legs of the tower.  He jumped to the tower's roof and vaulted off it, over the wall and into the base. 

The shooting on our side of the wall stopped.  We'd handled the gate team.

"That was stupid," Rutledge said.  "Had to be a twenty, maybe thirty foot drop on the other side."

"And all the troops," Kerr added.  "Let's get out of here and report back to HQ."

Just then, the gate started to open.  The wreckage of a troop truck waited on the other side.

I shook my head.  "Everybody in.  Weapons hot."

We never saw Dincht after that.  We encountered plenty of evidence of his passing.  Exploded fuel tanks.  Heavy weapons nests that looked like they'd encountered a tornado.  A tank on its side.  A command bunker with dented in doors.  And everywhere you looked, bodies, bodies, bodies.

By the time we got well and truly inside, our enemies begged for surrender.  I'd never seen such fear in their eyes before.  They promised to tell us anything we wanted to know, just so long as we didn't send _him _after them.

I couldn't have if I wanted to.  None of them knew where he'd gone, and despite searching the base top to bottom, I couldn't tell you how he left.  I'm told they don't stick around after a mission.  "If you want to thank a SeeD, mail the check," the joke goes.  And I hope for General Morin's sake he did just that.

All the same, I'd like to see that kid again.  I can't help but feel I owe him a drink.


End file.
